The Rust Belt Lawmaker Leading the Fight Against Trump’s Kennedy Center Plans

Rep. Joyce Beatty had just beaten President Trump for a second time in court in their battle over the future of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, when the two came face-to-face in a virtual boardroom last week.

Rep. Joyce Beatty at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.In the online meeting with roughly 30 board members watching, the president called Beatty “a destructive person” who has “never built anything” and accused her of hurting people by fighting to keep the performing arts venue open.

“I reminded him that he has us at war and people are dying,” Beatty told The Wall Street Journal later in the day.

The Ohio Democrat has been pepper sprayed for protesting the killing of George Floyd and arrested at a voting rights demonstration on Capitol Hill. She chaired the Congressional Black Caucus and helped secure Juneteenth as a federal holiday. But Beatty is now best known as the unlikely leader of the opposition to Trump’s push to rebrand the Kennedy Center in his own honor.

The 76-year-old lawmaker is the lone name on a lawsuit aimed at keeping an institution in the heart of Washington, D.C., operating as a living memorial to the late President John F. Kennedy. Beatty’s case has taken myriad twists and turns, most recently with Trump saying the venue might “end up being ripped down.”

Trump has been defeated twice in his efforts to rename the building, so Beatty’s case is now focused on keeping the center open. During the heated meeting last week, the board approved a resolution to immediately close the Kennedy Center’s main building for repairs.

Beatty was prompted to take on the Kennedy Center fight after she said the host muted her when she tried to object during the board’s first vote to rename the center in December. In a recent interview she said that incident made clear the Trump-friendly board was ready to rubber stamp whatever the president wanted.“If they can do this to me,” she recalls thinking, “what’s gonna happen to the institution?”

Lawyers for the Justice Department said in a court filing that Beatty has been a “troublemaking appointment” on the Kennedy Center board “from the beginning of her tenure!”

All her life, Beatty said, she has felt compelled to stand up for her rights, especially as a woman of color. She remembers feeling that way as a young girl growing up in Dayton in the 1950s and 1960s civil rights era when Black people in some places weren’t allowed to use the same water fountains as white people.

“My mother would squeeze my hands so tight because she thought I’d be defiant,” she said. “I’ve always been an out-front crusader, whether I stand alone or with a thousand.”

Beatty’s father worked in construction and held down multiple jobs to move the family to a white neighborhood with better schools. She served in Ohio’s state legislature for nearly a decade and spent the first part of her political career working from a wheelchair after suffering a stroke in 2000. She was elected to Congress in 2013 and represents a district that includes much of the state capitol, Columbus, and has a reputation for being feisty and hardworking. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed her to the Kennedy Center board in 2019.

For years that was a pretty uncontroversial post until Trump was re-elected and stacked the board with his own appointees, installing himself as chair. That thrust Beatty into one of the most heated fights of the 80-year-old president’s second term.

People often line up to shake her hand and thank her for taking on this fight when she is at events. Beatty has only missed one hearing in her court case since it began in December.

Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree, the top Democrat on the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Kennedy Center, said the majority party in Congress—especially those on her subcommittee—should have objected to Trump’s takeover.

“We shouldn’t be in a position where Joyce had to take it on personally with a group of lawyers,” Pingree said.

In recent weeks, the fight has reached a frenzied new pitch, after the board voted to close the center immediately. The board says a partial ceiling collapse in the Grand Foyer has made the building unsafe for visitors or staff and it must be closed.

“It’s not even a debatable point anymore,” said Brian Ballard, a Republican lobbyist Trump appointed to the board in 2020. Beatty’s opposition to the closure is political and “she just wanted her 15 minutes of fame,” he said.

(Beatty has never disputed that the center needs repairs, but she doesn’t believe it is in such disrepair that it has to close.)

The president has fumed that his efforts to rescue a cash-strapped venue have gone unappreciated. “I think the Trump administration should certainly have recognition,” Trump told reporters, speaking about his Kennedy Center renovation efforts Wednesday evening.

Photos emerged online this week showing Trump on Air Force One looking at a poster that said “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED,” but a senior administration official said there are no immediate plans to tear it down.

Beatty has vowed to continue her legal fight. But even the judge last week seemed exasperated by the contentiousness of a feud that shows no sign of ending.

“Is it possible to turn down the temperature a bit and come to ground on some of these issues?” asked U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper.

Write to Lydia Wheeler at lydia.wheeler@wsj.com